Cottages offer a less pricey way to live at Southfield

The newest single-family-home development at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station still exists only on paper. But it’s already drawing plenty of interest from potential buyers.

Jon Chesto

The newest single-family-home development at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station still exists only on paper. But it’s already drawing plenty of interest from potential buyers.

Paul Abelite, principal at Rockland-based Interactive Building Group, said the company had 11 signed offers with $1,000 deposits on July 14, the day the Cottages at Hollybrook hit the market, and then a couple of others within a few days.

Abelite attributes the initial success in part to the strength of the region’s economy.

“You have a pent-up demand (for homes),” he said. “The Boston market has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country right now.”

The 31-home Hollybrook project offers somewhat more affordable, smaller homes than IBG’s first project at the former air base, now known as SouthField. The Hollybrook cottages have an average size of 1,400 square feet and are listed for prices between $320,000 and $370,000.

IBG is also developing The Meadows, a nearby 34-home community where roughly half of the homes have been sold. Those homes range from 1,865 square feet to 2,100 square feet, with prices in the low $400,000s up to the low $500,000s, Abelite said.

IBG decided to develop the Hollybrook project after its principals realized that there was a niche to be filled in construction of smaller homes in the area. The target market, Abelite said, includes empty-nesters looking to downsize and single buyers. Like IBG’s other project, the Hollybrook cottages are built close together and rely on home association fees to cover landscape maintenance.

“People don’t want to maintain their yard anymore,” Abelite said. “They want to enjoy life as opposed to being a slave to their house and their yard.”

The homes’ marketability increased in recent weeks when a path was opened through the woods to the nearby South Weymouth commuter rail station, Abelite said. He expects IBG will begin construction on the Hollybrook homes within two months.

Canton-based Whitman Homes is building a 26-unit development nearby, and that firm is about to embark on an expansion that will involve 24 additional townhomes, Abelite said.

SouthField’s first residents started moving into Whitman-built homes about a year ago. And tenants recently started moving into a 226-unit apartment complex built by John M. Corcoran & Co. of Braintree.

Jon Chesto is at jchesto@ledger.com.

Read more about SouthField.

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